


Return to Sender

by Themistoklis



Category: The Black Tapes Podcast
Genre: Dolls, Gen, Power Outage, Storms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-16
Updated: 2017-10-16
Packaged: 2019-01-18 01:00:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12377643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Themistoklis/pseuds/Themistoklis
Summary: Strand slowly raises his head from his book. The look in his eyes is priceless. (The doll on her screen is only $18, plus $5.42 for shipping.) "Do I think that you should waste your money on a child's toy and a made-up story."





	Return to Sender

**Author's Note:**

  * For [evewithanapple](https://archiveofourown.org/users/evewithanapple/gifts).



"It's a cottage industry," Strand says.

Alex gives him a slight look of disbelief that doesn't seem to penetrate: he just sips his tea and looks back down at his book. They're sitting at a little round table in the airport on their way back from a research trip that'd been a complete bust. The interviewee had changed their mind and refused to answer the front door. Then, when they showed up at the airport, all the chairs near the outlets had been taken.

It has not been a banner day.

"You have to give me a little more context for comments like that," she says, looking back at her laptop.

She's been browsing eBay for - well, boredom - and ended up in the metaphysical section, which she hadn't known even existed. It started with looking at tarot cards. The interviewee was supposed to be a psychic for hire. Then Alex clicked on a seller's profile, and found a lot more than tarot cards. There were crystals. There were doll houses, and furniture to go in them.

Mostly because the seller recommended buying accessories to keep your newly-purchased haunted dolls happy. Apparently, ghosts like hand-crafted miniature furniture.

"People find these things in thrift shops or estate sales. They use Photoshop and some spooky stories to convince gullible people that they're buying a … ghost," Strand says. His mouth twists in distaste.

"Are you sure none of these listings could be real? I mean, they're on the  _ internet. _ "

"If ghosts existed, I would hope no one would resort to selling them for profit."

Alex decides not to ask him whether he realizes she'd been joking. "So… you don't think I should buy one of these."

Strand slowly raises his head from his book. The look in his eyes is priceless. (The doll on her screen is only $18, plus $5.42 for shipping.) "Do I think that you should waste your money on a child's toy and a made-up story."

"That didn't sound like a question."

"Is anything I say actually going to impact your decision?"

Alex glances at her phone, where a 'delayed flight' alert has popped up. "Nope."

Bored decisions weren't always the best decisions.

\---

The doll has big auburn curls and is wearing a striped cardigan over a frilly pink shirt dress. Alex touches the hair and thinks it's too soft compared to the plastic dolls she'd grown up with, but what did she know? It was probably made from some silk blend or something.

Inside the box is a note.  _ Yvette likes to look outside. Please put her somewhere she can see a window. If you do not see activity within your home in the next month, something is preventing Yvette from settling in. Try gardening or placing a bird feeder outside her window to help improve her view. _

She puts Yvette in her window at work. It looks out onto the concrete wall of the building next door instead of a garden or anything. But it  _ doesn't  _ face anybody else's offices, so she probably won't get any complaints from the neighbors. The doll will have to deal.

\---

Several days later, Alex is slumped over at her desk with her head in her hand when her phone rings. She stares at it for a moment before the letters click and she realizes it's Strand calling her. Her brain is just a little sluggish today. "Hello?"

"Am I forgiven?"

A little sluggish, a lot. Alex brings the phone away from her ear to stare at it. "Huh?"

"I've called twice before and you haven't answered, or texted me back to let me know you couldn't talk," Strand says. His voice is mostly even, though a little tight. "If I did something to irritate you again, I wish you would simply say so."

"Richard, I haven't gotten any calls today."

A long pause on the other end of the line. "I called once at noon, and again at two."

"I haven't gotten  _ any  _ calls today. I - Shit, just a sec," she says, dropping the phone to her desk. 

The office had been warm all day and it had been making her drowsy, so she'd left her window open. Now it's starting to rain and she's just gotten hit in the face with a gust of wet wind. Grunting, she presses down on the window with both hands. It's stuck tight. She has to lean all her weight into it to get the window closed most of the way. There's still an inch of a crack at the bottom, but that's going to have to do for now.

Yvette had fallen over in her struggle to close the window. The bottom of the doll's dress is getting soaked through, but there's no clean spot for Alex to move her to on the desk. Besides, she can hear Strand saying  _ Alex?  _ over the phone.

She scoops it back up. "Sorry. It's raining and it was coming inside." She blows a piece of hair out of her face. "I didn't get your calls. I don't know, I think there's something wrong with my phone."

Strand hesitates. When he speaks, his voice is a little more relaxed. "Have you been having difficulty?"

"Since Tuesday." Alex rubs her hand over her face. "Have you  _ been  _ calling?"

"No, just today. I received an email I … thought I should tell you about."

"Well, I'm not doing anything now." Except counting down to the end of the day when she can go back to bed. Not that she thinks she'll actually fall asleep, but her bed is more comfortable than her desk chair.

There's a sudden crack of thunder and, a few heartbeats later, a bright flash of lightning. When it fades, there are no lights left in Alex's office.

"Fuck," she says, jumping as another gust of wind rattles the window. Behind her, the office door slams shut. "Double fuck."

"...Alex?"

"The power's out," she mutters.

Without letting go of the phone this time, she tries to shut the window all the way. It still won't budge. So she turns on her heel and stomps over to the other side of the room. Flicking the light switch doesn't do anything. Her eyes are still adjusting, but she can't see any light from the hallway seeping in underneath the door, either. The next thing to do is try the circuit breaker in the hall.

Except when she tests the doorknob, it won't turn.

She sucks in a sharp breath and Strand asks, "Alex?" again. But she isn't listening. She holds the phone between her ear and her shoulder and tugs on the doorknob with both hands, but it still won't turn. She tries the lock, but no matter which direction she turns it, nothing happens.

Strand is getting increasingly upset. Or maybe that's her. "Alex, if you're still there, say something."

"I'm  _ stuck. _ "

\---

This is what she gets for working on long weekend. Nobody else is in the office, and Nic is out of town, and it would be too embarrassing to call any of the interns. So Alex sits in her dark office, far enough away from the window that she isn't getting rained on, and tries not to panic.   
  


It'll be really, really embarrassing if she's panicking when Strand gets there.

Her phone is only at 24% battery, but she has the flashlight on anyway. It's sitting face-down on her desk pointing up at the ceiling so at least she has more than gray rain-light to see by.

Which is good, because when Yvette clatters off the windowsill, Alex can see it happening and convince herself it was just the wind.

Her voice is stuck in her throat. She gets out of her chair and takes a couple of steps back. Over the speaker, she can hear Strand telling her that he's nearby, and that it looks like the entire street is out. "The stoplights are out. There's no one directing traffic, so I'm going to be stuck here for a minute. But I'll be there soon," he tells her.

"Thank you," Alex says, overly loud so she's sure he can hear her.

The lightning is still just a couple of seconds behind the thunder. The wind is making an awful whistling sound through the open window. She could try to … she doesn't know, but she could try on her own, instead of sitting here waiting for Strand to rescue her.

The least she can do is not panic.

Squaring her shoulders, she crosses over to the doll and sits her upright against the wall. There's no point in putting her back into the windowsill, the thing is just a puddle at this point. The doll absolutely doesn't move in her fingers. Her eyes do slide shut as soon as she's sitting up again, but with all that auburn hair, Yvette is top-heavy. Alex also thinks that maybe the eBay seller put something in the doll's head to make it tip forward eerily all the time.

"How about you tell me whatever you were calling about in the first place," she suggests, wiping her palms off on her jeans.

There's no noise from Strand for a moment. Then he says, "I think I should wait until I'm actually there."

"I'm watching shadows in a dark office. I'm pretty sure I'm the only person in the entire  _ building, _ " Alex says. "Literally anything you talk about will be good."

"Did you ever receive that doll you ordered?"

"That is… not a question I expected you to ask me."

Yvette is a dark blotch against the wall. Alex picks up her phone to bring it off speaker and sees her battery is only at 14% now. She turns off the flashlight and brings it up to her ear.

"I received an email last night with a video of an allegedly haunted doll. It was two hours and four minutes long. I haven't watched it."

Alex chews on her bottom lip. "Mmm."

"The email mentioned that I might find the video personally relevant, as they knew the show had recently acquired a similar item."

"I … did buy that doll. But I haven't posted anywhere about it," Alex says. "No one should know." 

She feels like she can feel her heartbeat thudding in her hands. The room seems deeply dark without the flashlight, but she'd rather be in the dark than not have a phone at all. Who knows how much longer it's going to take Strand to get here, if all the stoplights are out. She reluctantly sits back down in her chair, then decides to wheel it backwards until her shoulders are against the wall. It helps, a little.

"Do you remember what email address it came from?"

"Not off the top of my head. I forwarded it to you, when you didn't answer. Look, Alex," he says, as she again toggles him to speaker, this time so she can pull up her email. "I think you should leave it until I get there. It's unsettling, but at worst the person you bought it from recognized your name. I don't think it's cause for real alarm."

The email is very short, and Alex isn't listening to him. " _ Dear Dr. Strand, _ " she reads, keeping her voice as even as possible.  _ "Your friend is interested in items like mine. I've attached here more proof than you should need as to my authenticity. Please share it with the show. Dabblers are rarely good caretakers, and take the consequences into their own hands. Regards, Diana Haunt." _

Strand is quiet. She can hear a car honking in the background. He sighs, then says, "I thought the name had more numbers than that."

"The 4s stand for As," Alex explains. She swallows audibly. "It's cool. It's just a super creepy email. While I'm locked in my office. In the dark. With the doll."

"Alex," Strand murmurs.

"I'm fine." She glances at the phone. 11% battery. "People wouldn't sell  _ actual  _ ghosts online, right?"

"There are no actual ghosts." Strand mutters something under his breath and there's a sound like squeaking wheels. She hopes that he's not driving recklessly. The air outside is thick with rain and hardly easy to see in, let alone move in. "Like I said, I do not believe it's something to be genuinely worried about. But I do think that you should be more careful with your name online."

Alex flinches as Yvette topples forward. The doll is top-heavy. It just is. There's all that… hair, for once. "I don't understand why they would email  _ you. _ "

"I get a lot of email like that," Strand said, dryly. "People seem to think that if they appeal to you, I'm more likely to reply. I don't tell you about all of it because most of it isn't worth your attention."

"I could make that decision for myself."

"To be honest, Ruby makes most of those decisions for me. And you don't have an assistant to filter your emails."

"No, but I still want to know about stuff like this. Especially when I have the ghost doll in my office."

Strand makes a soft sound. "There is a semi-famous doll from Florida. The story goes that it was gifted to a young boy, both named Robert, but the boy went by Gene. His parents claimed that they would hear Gene talking to his doll and then hear a deep voice answer. Then their son started blaming things on the doll."

"Of… Of course he did."

"When he was an adult, he and his wife fought over the doll taking prominence in their home. After Gene died, his widow was too afraid of the doll to throw him away. Instead, she locked him in the attic until her own death. He's supposed to be cursed - if you insult him, you'll have bad luck until you apologize or give him a gift. Even Gene was supposedly afraid of him."

Alex clutched her phone a little tighter. She moved toward Yvette, then stopped herself. The thing was staring at her but she didn't want to touch it to turn it around. "Is this supposed to make me feel better?"

"Robert the doll is in a museum now. He's shown up in a lot of TV 'documentaries'," and oh boy, can she  _ hear  _ the air quotes, "and receives apology mail from all over the country, from people who think they wronged him. It's very easy for humans to convince themselves that an inanimate object is malevolent. Especially if said object has a face. But it's not  _ real.  _ Nothing bad has happened to anyone who's worked at the museum. People who are invested in the story scare themselves with it, but anyone who comes into contact with the doll on a day-to-day basis aren't afraid."

"So it's just a creepy doll?"

Strand would never actually  _ snort,  _ but he does have a half-laugh that Alex has unwillingly started to find comforting. "I would argue that all dolls are somewhat 'creepy,' but we could talk about the uncanny valley another time."

Alex couldn't help but laugh herself. "I can't believe your reaction to me trying not to have a panic attack was to tell me a story about a doll hundreds of people think is haunted. But thank you."

Alex waits, then frowns. "Strand?"

Her phone is dark. She presses the home button, and it stays dark.

Fucking great.

\---

Before her phone died - at least, he hopes that's what happened - Alex had given Strand the code to the security system. He types it in at the front door and reflexively walks to the elevator before remembering why he's there. Scowling, he fumbles for the flashlight function on his own phone. It's fairly easy to see in the lobby, lit up by what light there is outside and the occasional bolt of lightning, but the stairwell isn't going to be the same.

He'd found a parking spot not far from the building. Except he hadn't been able to find his umbrella in the front seat, and decided it was raining too hard to try searching for it in the trunk. So now he's dripping all over the lobby floor.

He's grateful for the flashlight when he does get into the stairs. The door swings shut behind him and without his phone, he wouldn't be able to see his hand in front of his face. Sighing, he starts moving. Five flights of stairs isn't so bad.

It's been probably eight minutes since his call dropped. On the second flight, he feels a twinge of guilt over snapping at Alex when she'd first answered. It had been an unreasonable reaction given the time frame.

He probably also should not have told her about the email. He should have thought of something else to say. But she'd asked, and he hadn't been able to think of anything but her locked in her dark office.

Fourth flight, and he's slowing down just a little. His clothes are starting to feel cold. It's very unpleasant to walk up stairs in wet slacks.

The door is probably just jammed. It should only take a couple of minutes to open it, at most.

"Alex?" he calls, as soon as he's in the PNWS offices. It's a good thing she left the front door unlocked behind her - even though part of him thinks that wasn't the safest thing to do.

There's no answer, so he aims his flashlight down the hallway and continues walking.

He raps on her door as soon as he reaches it. "Alex?"

"Richard!"

Shutting his eyes for a brief moment, he presses his palm to the door. "Are you all right?"

"I'm better," Alex says. She laughs a little. "I'm sorry for dragging you out here."

"It's no problem. I was already on the road." He pauses, then puts his phone down on the floor so he can keep the light on. He tests the doorknob and finds it will only turn about a quarter of the way. "Can you tell whether the lock is engaged?"

"It's not. It shouldn't be. I leave it unlocked, and it won't turn." Alex laughs again, and it sounds strained this time. "You don't know how to pick a lock, do you?"

"I don't think that will be necessary."

Strand tests the doorknob with both hands. He struggles for a moment and decides he would rather not actually break the door, if it isn't already open. Asking Alex gets him directions to the supply closet where there's a very basic tool box.

All it ends up taking is a screwdriver, wedged between the door and the frame, and shoved down to disengage the latch. The door makes a slight creaking sound and Alex yanks it open while Strand is still holding the screwdriver in place. He opens his mouth to say hello, but ends up staggering back a step as Alex hops up onto her toes to hug him tightly.

"Um." He hesitantly hugs her back with one arm. The screwdriver is in his free hand.

"God, sorry," she says, dropping back down. The front of her shirt is damp, but she doesn't seem to notice. She smiles sheepishly at him. "Hi. Thank you for coming to get me."

"You're welcome," he says. He clears his throat and she steps back, giving him the chance to retrieve his cell phone from the floor. When he brings it back down to his side he spots the doll leaning against the wall underneath Alex's window. "You paid money for that?" he asks, unable to stop himself.

Alex cringes. "I know!"

He gives her a sideways look. The doll is so pale that it gleams even in the dark, and is sitting at an odd angle. "Are you… Were you okay, after the call dropped?"

"I'm fine." She rubs at her face. If there were more light, he'd be able to tell how tired she looked. He wonders why she's even working today, but decides not to comment - it's not like he hadn't been calling her about work, earlier. "It was unsettling, but mostly because of that email. I'm not making any more impulse buys from eBay Metaphysical."

"I think that's probably wise."

Alex locks up behind them, and they dart to his car in the rain. It's started to lighten up slightly, although now that it's later in the day, the sun has set completely. It's hard to see clearly in the downpour but his car is the only one in the parking lot. They get inside not too much worse for the wear.

As soon as they're inside, the streetlights in the parking lot come to life, and a few lights in the building. Alex grumbles and slides down in the passenger seat of his car. Strand is just grateful that he's not going to have to get through traffic without stoplights.

\---

There is an open spot directly outside of Alex's apartment building. Strand parallel parks and stretches slightly in his seat. He's trying to decide whether to tell Alex that he hopes she can sleep well tonight when she turns to him and bites her lip.

"Richard," she starts.

He waits, less because he's a patient person than because he doesn't know what to say.

Alex takes a deep breath. "Thank you. For being here tonight. For putting up with me. I really appreciate it."

"It was… no problem." He frowns. "Please don't think of it as 'putting up with' you."

A faint flush of pink rises to her face. "I mean, you know."

"I hope you don't think I would have left you locked in a dark office."

Alex brings her hands up, palms out. "No, I don't! I just." She looks at him, wilted, although the wet hair stuck to the sides of her face isn't helping him read her expression. "I just mean - you. You stayed on the phone with me, and you didn't have to."

He feels his mouth twist into a slight grimace. "I probably chose poorly in anecdotes to share," he says. "But other than that, I'm… glad that it helped."

"Oh, no, it was - it was fine. I said thank you, but my phone had died."

"Oh." He relaxes a little. "Good. I felt badly about you sitting there with that being the last thing I had said."

She unbuckles her seatbelt. "It was all right. I'm definitely sending the doll back to 'Diana Haunt' on Monday, though."

"You should probably tell her that emailing client's friends about their purchases is a bad business practice," he says.

Alex stops with her hand outstretched for her purse on the floor of the car. She stares at him for so long that he starts to wonder what he said wrong, and then a wide smile bursts onto her face. Strand doesn't really understand what's going on, but at least it doesn't seem to be anything bad. She hauls her purse onto her shoulder and says, "I'll tell her just that."

"Goodnight," Strand says, as she steps out onto the sidewalk. Then, impulsively: "Sleep well."

Alex smiles at him again. "Thanks. You too."


End file.
